The Immortal Dream

by Czar_Yoshi

Boundary

"We are here," Unnrus-kaeljos said, light cresting the top of its wave in an eternal flood. "I can take you no further."

I stood before the frozen wave on a chunk of rough red rock protruding above the lifestream. Now that I had been inside, I could see a little more clearly through the wall, like the surface of a shallow, rippling brook. The distant runes of light, the golden void, the figure with wings of swords hovering among it... but this was the real world, and Unnrus-kaeljos was now as distant as a waking dream.

"The child you seek is nearby," Unnrus-kaeljos promised, "but may not be for long. You must act decisively if you wish to recover her. Now go. I shall anticipate the day when we meet in person again."

And then the wave unfroze, and swept on by.

I didn't say anything as the light wave receded in the distance, and neither did Faye. Gradually, though, my trance was interrupted by the awareness that nothing about this area of the lifestream felt familiar.

First was the ether itself. Normally placid and so still it could be mistaken for the sky, it had ripples and waves, lapping choppily against the rocks. The turbulence broke up the visage of stars and replaced it with a purple, greenish swirl, and it didn't subside with Unnrus-kaeljos's passing.

Second was the wind. While the air around the river was never so stagnant as to be unbreathable, here, it blustered in my ears and threatened to lift the fur on my back.

The horizon was lit in the direction the wind was blowing from, almost as if Unnrus-kaeljos was still visible in the distance, except the light was different, more like sunset during a thunderstorm where the clouds broke far on the horizon. When I climbed to the top of the boulder pile, that light stretched in a vast, unbroken line before me, a solid wall of something in the distance.

I wasn't standing on the only solid ground, either. All around me, the cave ceiling was riddled with cracks and fissures, boulders and scree fallen from above and sitting in the river. The spider-web nature of the ceiling cracks led to a matching pattern of debris down below, a network of narrow, loosely-packed bridges that separated lagoons where the lifestream was calmer and rivers where it had broken through. And the cracks in the ceiling were easy to see, because through many of them, light was filtering down from above.

As I watched, a choppier part of the lifestream breaking against a wall of rock erupted like a geyser, spraying the ceiling with ether. The ether seemed to catch fire in midair as it rose, some of the magical flames burning against the ceiling and others escaping up the fissure like a chimney flue. When the activity subsided, the ceiling was stained a glossy black where the flames had burned it; I saw many other such places mixed in with the reddish natural rock from above. In the distance, another such plume erupted, filling my ears with the sound of distant explosions silhouetted by the wind.

Where are we? Faye asked in my mind. Is this somewhere with a broken Tree of Harmony? This can't be natural.

"I dunno." I spun in a slow circle, the eldritch landscape unbroken in every direction. "But, I think we should start by looking for a way up."

---

After an hour of painstaking progress, navigating terrain so loose that it could shift with the slightest bump of my hoof, I reached an area beneath a chasm with light filtering through where debris had piled high enough in one point to reach the ceiling. The odds of actually being able to climb beyond that point were infinitesimal, particularly without my bracelet to bolster my endurance, but the alternative to pressing on was taking a break, and that meant talking about Unnrus-kaeljos and how we were all alone with no friends or resources to fall back on, by our own volition. And that was bound to be an awkward conversation, so I pressed on.

I made it to the top of the rubble pile and into the chasm, stopping to rest on a thin shelf of rock suspended just above the ceiling level. It didn't feel sturdy, but looking around, nothing did: the walls of the chasm were cracked and broken, as if they had lost coherency as the world's crust a long time ago and only remained in place because nothing had tried to move them. Which didn't make sense, considering they were supported by nothing from below. But I wasn't sure what else to make of the sight.

Look up above, Faye said in my mind. The sky is right there. We aren't far underground at all.

I craned my neck. Surely enough, the rocks stopped in the distance, perhaps three times as far above as I had already come, climbing up from the ether river to the ceiling of its cavern. The chasm twisted as it rose, rocky lumps and protrusions sticking out at all angles, making its walls feel more like a hunk of crumbly cheese that had been pulled into halves rather than cleanly sliced or fractured. But through its twisting, I could see bits and patches of a dull, greenish-blue sky.

The Icereach sky hadn't matched up with the Ironridge sky, an icy, whitish-blue contrasted with a pure tropical teal, and both of those had been different from the cheery baby-blue skies in Equestria. But this was yet different, feeling somehow tired and sickly. Just like the sluggish, broken rocks of the canyon that didn't even fall down properly.

Where were we?

I followed the ledge enough to find some good hoofholds, and resumed my climb. A benefit of the rocks being so cracked like this, stability aside, was that it made climbing easy: the next slab up never aligned perfectly with the one below it, sometimes leaving a crack for me to wedge a hoof into, other times recessed enough to create a tiny ledge. Two more times, I stopped to rest; being in great physical shape made this climb possible in the first place, but it didn't inure me to the effects of dragging my body up a giant, unforgiving obstacle course.

This would be so much easier if I could use my wings.

Sorry, Faye said. If that was something I was sealing away, like the memories of us being a changeling queen, I would have given it back long ago. I wish we could fly too.

I sighed, waiting on a recessed ledge as an ether flame eruption passed by. The dark, multicolored flames rose swiftly, like an upside-down waterfall, and I could feel some sort of energy as they passed by, but it wasn't heat. This place was actually quite cold. It was refreshing, after so long away from Icereach.

After the eruption dissipated, I pressed on, using a fallen spur of rock to bridge to the other side of the chasm, where progressing looked easier. The bridge itself was majorly cracked in two different places, and yet it still held against my weight, even though it had every reason to crumble under its own. And yet, across from me, some scree slid down through a channel between two large slabs, pebbles clattering against bigger rocks, prompted by nothing.

I scrambled to the top of a slab that had started tipping out over the abyss, but gotten stopped by the pressure of the one above it, creating a large, slanted ledge that most smaller debris would roll off of. The rocks were a mix of rusty red and sandy yellow, streaked here and there by brown and gray, a homogeneous blend that felt like someone had taken once-pristine strata and then rearranged them a bit. Old rocks, dry rocks, cracked and broken rocks... Another shower of tiny pebbles and dust passed down, as I neared the very top.

A side chasm broke off from the main one, this one not going all the way down, and it provided me with a gentler ramp to finish my ascent. After clambering atop one final boulder wedged into the crack, I put my forehooves up on the rim of the surface, pulled myself up, and stared.

The landscape was broken just like the walls of the chasm, only magnified and turned on their side. Plain broken stone with no hint of vegetation or life was stacked haphazardly, forming steep hills or short mountains with stair-like slopes made from slabs of broken rock, with no soil in sight. The elevation changes were dynamic with no flat land in sight, so I resumed my climb, pulling myself onto the surface and then up several more chunks of rock to the crest of a nearby ridge.

Beyond that were more mountains. Low chains, like the one I was on now, unnaturally flat basins, giant pillars that sometimes expanded or formed arches as they rose. In some places there were simply floating islands of rock that were supported by nothing and didn't bother to fall; the big floating islands were invariably surrounded by smaller boulders or shards that joined them at a close distance in midair. Everything was crisscrossed by chasms leading to the lifestream below, and the occasional eruptions of flame were the only relief I had from the landscape's overpowering brownness. But even they seemed tainted, just like the greenish sky, rising as bands of aurora that eventually lost their momentum and drifted around the peaks of the pillars until they lost cohesion and vanished in smoke.

The wind blew less constantly than it had down below, sometimes shifting at a moment's whim, gales and blusters creeping like predators through pockets of stillness. And in the distance - close in the distance - there was a light on the horizon, just like I had seen from below.

This place is wrong, Faye whispered in my mind, giving voice to the obvious. It's too... dead. The stars that we see when you get closer to my power, especially when I've been suppressed for a while? There's nothing. Not even the background haze I get from plant life and creatures that aren't intelligent. Nothing at all.

I was beginning to grow thirsty, and my skin itched beneath my coat, as if I was too hot even though it was freezing out here. "Maybe we should focus on making sure we don't end up the same way," I said. "We know Coda is nearby. That means there must be someone with her, right? Someone with some way to survive out here. Are you sure you can't sense anything at all?"

No. Nothing.

"In that case..." I glanced at the glowing horizon, which seemed to be only beyond one more shallow ridge. "We go that way. Because I'm pretty sure that was the direction we were going when Unnrus-kaeljos dropped us off, and it looks like there's something over there."

Without wings, I had to make a careful descent through a valley to reach the next ridge, this one also sporting a chasm down to the lifestream. After following it for so long that I realized it was about to wrap back around and become the chasm I ascended through, I doubled back and tried the other direction, this time miraculously finding another bridge. The dryness in my throat grew worse as the minutes ticked into another hour, but eventually I crested the next ridge, and looked out at the end.

Before me, the chasms rapidly grew wider until the land gave way to a collection of floating islands, the view ahead more air than stone. Through the widening cracks, I could see the lifestream once again, flowing faster and faster outwards until it hit a burning band, lighting up in a luminous band of plasma, a perfect, unbroken line. Jets of flame rose up with increasing frequency the closer to the boundary I looked, and beyond that line, from my high-up vantage point, there was nothing. The green sky darkened as it drew closer to the horizon until I could see night and stars beyond, and below, as well.

I was looking down over the edge of the world. And beneath it was the night sky, exactly like the river of ether... except now connected to the night above.

This is... Faye whispered in my mind, her thoughts trailing off into awe.

"The edge of the world," I whispered back. "I always wondered what it would look like. Isn't this place supposed to be so dangerous nobody's ever properly explored it, beyond confirming that it probably exists?"

They say the laws of physics break down as you get closer to the edge, Faye said. And judging by how inconsistent gravity and erosion are here, I'd say that might just be accurate. They also say it's difficult to sustain life out here, and impossible to create new life.

"Difficult to sustain life." I was feeling that pretty strongly now, except... I pointed a hoof. "Then what do you think that is?"

Near the very edge, in an area where the islands were slightly denser and the chasms slightly closer to still being chasms instead of empty space, a network of bridges crossed the gaps, rusted and looking as if someone had thought better of building them halfway through construction. And on the island at the end of the bridges, the largest chunk of rock that far out in either direction as far as the eye could see, was a castle, made of the same reddish-brown stone, reinforced with sporadic metal plating and surrounded by a glossy bubble the color of normal sky.

I don't know, Faye said with a mental shiver. I'm not getting any signs of life from it at all. No stars. It's just as dead as the rest of this place.

I pointed at one of the castle's towers, where a distinctive airship was moored. Heavily armored and overengineered, its prow was painted to look like the face of a shark, and it had what looked like a giant eye on its belly.

There was no mistaking it: I had seen this airship before, in Ironridge newspaper articles about the Pirate King, Rhodallis.

"I don't know why our powers aren't working," I hissed, "but this place has to be important. That's where we need to go."

Faye sounded skeptical. Do you think we're really in a position to go walking into a castle we know nothing about, that's protected by unknown magic, when we're on our own and not at full power?

I bit my tongue. No... With our history, that would probably end terribly. "But what choice do we have?" I decided to press, my ears slicking back against the wind. "The light spirit said Coda's not going to be here for long. And do you really think there are going to be any livable rest areas within however many miles of here for us to rest up, learn about the situation and get better equipment?"

Faye hesitated. ...I'm just worried. Halcyon, I'm not so sure trusting Unnrus-kaeljos is a good idea. I know you want to break out of our pattern of failing to perform when the pressure is on, but we have no safety net at all right now. What will we do the first time anything tries to stop us at all?

I glanced down... and remembered that I was wearing only boots, and no coat. Odds were, I'd get abashed about having so much of my body in plain sight among strangers, even if our first encounter wasn't hostile. We wouldn't accomplish anything at all.

But even though my own mental limitations had stopped me before, they had yet to stop me this time. We weren't paralyzed yet, and could still try again.

I just hope that if this place teaches you a lesson, it'll be one you can recover from, Faye said. I might... No, never mind. If we wind up in need of saving again, it'll be because we've exhausted all our options and can't make ourselves do anything more, once and for all. And maybe having nothing to fall back on this time will be what we need to push through.

"Thanks." I nodded, hoping her logic was sound. "And hey, maybe you're right and there's nobody in that castle at all. In which case, free airship for us?"

Maybe. Faye didn't sound convinced.

---

I made my way slowly and carefully towards the castle, painfully aware of how little cover there was as I searched for natural bridges I could use to reach the point where the constructed bridges began. Another hour passed, the sun never budging from its position on the opposite horizon to the world's edge. Maybe it didn't work right here, either.

At this rate, dehydration was going to kill me before any bad encounters did.

The closer I drew, the better of a look at the castle I got. Its entire island had been reinforced, plates of what looked like scrap iron bolted across fractures in the rock to hold it together. Whether or not that actually helped, I couldn't tell. The other islands were holding together just fine despite looking like they could break apart at any minute, after all.

Finally, after descending far more than I was comfortable with to reach a point where the islands were close enough to jump, I clawed my way onto the final island before the real bridges started, and approached the first one. It seemed to be made from iron fencing nailed haphazardly to the top of four parallel pipes, the pipes burrowing into and out of the rock of the islands themselves, leaving cracks where it entered.

The pipes seemed familiar for some reason, though I couldn't place where. They were silvery and ribbed, only slightly tarnished compared to the fencing that made up the walking surface above them, made up of countless interlocking cylinders each a little shorter than a pony. How had they gotten here? What was their purpose? I decided not to stick around and speculate; there was no cover at all from here to the gates of the castle, and four whole islands to cross to get there. If any undetectable guards were watching, and I didn't want to throw myself on their mercy, I'd have to move quick-

"Well, well, well!" something said the moment I set hoof on the bridge. "This is surprising!"

I jumped in shock, landing back on the starting island. "Who said that!?"

Nothing.

Carefully, warily, I inched a hoof back over to the bridge.

"Yeah, there you are!" The voice was back, peppy and cheerful. "Don't run away, or anything. You've seen what this place looks like, right? I bet you'll last all of ten minutes out there without some serious preparation!"

"What... are you...?" I asked, keeping a single hoof on the bridge.

"The name's Canon!" the bridge chirped, speaking with a big-city stallion's voice. "I'm a life support system! My purpose in existence is keeping your meaty moist bits from turning into desiccated rock. And you, chump, I'm thinking you're getting pretty desiccated. Been out here too long, or something? How'd you get out here in the first place?"

"It's a long story," I started. "And I'm not a chump-"

"Yeah, yeah, probably longer than you've got left on your clock. Tell you what: you just keep going this way, and I'll find a way to get you into the castle and get you some water. That way, you can keep the meat on your bones where it belongs! Sounds good, eh?"

I had no idea what to make of this. "Isn't that dangerous?" I asked warily. "Your castle's just accepting visitors? It's not out here to make it impossible to reach?"

"Aww, of course it is!" Canon excitedly agreed. "But I'm a keep-your-meat-made-of-meat system, not a security system. Can't fault me for just doing my job. So come on, what have you got to lose? No more than you've got on the line staying out in this stinking desert."

Fake hospitality is still better in the short term than outright hostility, Faye admitted.

I agreed, and so I took a tentative step forward.

"That's more like it. Hey, pick up the pace!" Canon encouraged. "You're not getting any moister standing out here, that's for sure. You know water? That good wet stuff? Gravity works in weird ways on it out here. Sometimes it falls straight up into the sky. You could drill all the wells you like out here and not find a single molecule. It's that bad. In fact-"

Canon's voice cut off as I left the bridge behind and stepped onto the next island.

"Wow, you really can't hear me," Canon said the moment I stepped onto the next bridge. "Most ponies, see, I can bother them from a pretty respectable distance. Comes with keeping their meat alive. Are you sure you're normal, chump? It's like you go invisible the moment you stop touching the pipes."

"The pipes?" I ignored the insult and kept moving, looking at the supports for the bridge. "What's that got to do with anything?"

"Well, they're basically my skeleton!" Canon explained, endlessly talkative. "Kind of like the bones in your own body, except you don't talk with those. Except for your jawbone! But that's a special case. So think of the pipes like my skeleton, except every bone is a jawbone. That clear it up?"

How bizarre.

Canon kept chattering as I approached the final bridge before the gates of the castle. "So you're sure I'm welcome here?" I warily repeated, looking up at the massive sealed gate and the dome of blue just around it. "This doesn't look like a place that's expecting visitors."

"Well, of course you're not!" Canon happily rambled. "But screw that, says I. Case in point, you're not doing so hot out there on your own, and what am I supposed to do, not do my job?"

"Against your masters' wishes?" I ventured.

"Eh." Canon gave me a verbal shrug. "You know, keeping blokes alive in a place like this is a pretty tough job. Not just anyone can pull it off! So I suppose you could say if they don't like the way I do things, too bad, 'cause they're stuck with me. Anyone less dedicated to the job wouldn't be up to the task, see. I bet you couldn't do a better job of making this place habitable!"

"Right..." I glanced again at the gate, which remained locked and closed. "Where are we, again? Whose castle is this?"

"Boy, you came all the way out here without knowing a thing like that?" Canon chortled. "People sure are strange. This is Neo Everlaste Palace, the seat of power of the Griffon Empire! The whole entire consulate is based here. Say, you're not a consul nobody introduced me to, right?"

The Griffon Empire.

"I don't think so," I said distractedly, realizing I hadn't even started making a list of all the places I knew about on the world's edge. The Griffon Empire.

The land where I was born.

"Thought not. You don't really have the moxie for it, you know?" Canon's voice echoed up from the pipes, which I realized also crawled their way across some of the castle walls, like lazy vines on a poorly-maintained structure. "But hey, I've been fed wilder stories before. Anyway, let's get you up and inside! Circle around right for a bit. There's a great pipe there that'll let you climb over the wall."

"Convenient," I muttered, leaving the metal and Canon's voice behind as I circled the dangerously thin strip of dusty rock between the castle wall and the bottomless void, turbulent ether frothing below on its way to the edge just a single island-length away.

Eventually, I found the pipe, arranged at a gentle slope up the wall and with nothing else to block my climb. The bottom disappeared into the rock, and the top flopped over the edge of the wall.

"This sure seems like something the castle security would be interested in," I noted as I climbed it, my boots feeling slick against the pipe's polished surface. Its metal felt thin somehow, not quite weak enough to buckle under my weight, but like I could punch it and leave a dent without too much trouble. "Why's there even a pipe here, anyway?"

"Because it looked too empty without one," Canon explained, as if that was a perfectly reasonable reason to build a pipe in an unreasonable place. "Where else was I gonna put it?"

"Fair enough..." I reached the rampart, where the shield around the castle touched down.

Stepping through the shield, I instantly felt better. A ringing in my ears I hadn't noticed before disappeared, the sky was blue again, and I felt mildly less parched, on top of a general sense that my balance had improved and I could close my eyes without worrying if I'd be able to open them again.

Unfortunately, the pleasantness from being inside a righted environment was offset by the contents of the castle courtyard. It wasn't just the island outside: austere steel plating completely covered the floor and haphazard parts of the walls, with pipes zigzagging everywhere they wouldn't trip someone up. It gave the impression that this was an ancient structure that had been hastily repurposed by someone whose sense of style was meant to feel as unwelcoming as possible.

The courtyard was also completely empty. Not a soul to be seen.

"Looks like security's light today!" Canon happily remarked.

Halcyon? Faye said in my mind. The moment we stepped inside this bubble, I started being able to detect people. There are quite a few on that airship, but outside of it, I can only feel five in this entire castle. I think. It's hard to count, because some of them are deeply abnormal.

Worrying... What kind of abnormal?

I'm not sure, she continued. I've never felt anything like this before. And they're all similar, but different, too. If we can get away from our pipe friend, let's try to pass over control so you can feel it too.

Lovely. I glanced at the nearest pipe, brushing it again with a hoof.

"Alright, chump," Canon goaded. "You're going to have to trust me on this one, but that side door there is completely unguarded. Just do your sarosian thing and slide on in!"

I looked at the door it seemed to be suggesting, down in a shadowed area of the courtyard.

It's telling the truth, Faye confirmed. No one behind that door. All of them are higher up in the tower.

That was good enough for me... especially since Canon hadn't done anything yet to indicate it could hear Faye. I dropped down from the wall and slipped in beneath the door.

The corridor on the other side had been mostly retrofitted with black metal plates, but nobody had bothered to see to the joints, and as a result they were separated at the edges by about an inch of bare, ancient stone.

This corridor had no pipes in it, but at a junction ahead, another one unceremoniously snaked around a corner, laying on the floor like a discarded garden hose. I walked up and touched it.

"Smooth sailing so far, right?" Canon egged me on. "So next you'll go left, then right up the staircase, then right, then go past three doors and you'll find the water storage room. And boom. Am I a life preservation system of my word, or am I one of my word?"

"We'll see about that," I said, thinking to Faye, Can you feel Coda?

She paused. Maybe. It's possible one of the things I feel could be her. I didn't get any time up front around her after she absorbed the windigoes... or before that, for that matter. But I know what a windigo feels like, and I think there are traces of those here.

Right...

I didn't like any of this. Now that the conversation had turned to windigoes, Canon's demeanor reminded me worryingly of Ludwig. Was I jumping at an invitation to walk into a trap? Even if this was a place I needed to go to accomplish my mission... Pressing on, whether I listened to Canon or not, would be a matter of throwing my fate to the whims of fortune.

How had I managed to get into this situation with so little resources at my disposal?

Well, Faye lectured, I did warn you about jumping into that you-know-what...

Here I was chasing Coda with no weapons, no reliable information about where I was or what was going on around here, no allies, no escape plan, and no supplies for surviving in the wilderness. And, as usual, I was freezing up: not because I was unreasonably scared to commit to a course of action, but because I quite literally had no tools to work with.

Was this always what did me in at the end? Every time I had failed before, was it due to a lack of preparation not giving me the tools I needed to carry out a decent plan?

How was I so bad at this?

Change of plans, I thought at Faye. Forget Coda for now. Even if I find her and grab her, I don't know that I could survive on my own right now, much less carrying around an ice sculpture. Top priority is now finding a way to get to a place where we can survive long enough to get some resources to our name. The only thing around here that's remotely familiar is that pirate ship, so I think our best bet is to try our luck with them. At the very least, we know they oppose Ironridge's windigo government, so we might be able to trade information for safe passage out of here.

Faye considered this. ...I didn't expect that from you. But I don't see that we have any options that involve less gambling.

Should we still go check out this water storage room our pipe friend wants to lead us to? I asked.

What do you think? Faye asked back.

It didn't seem worth it. Not if I wanted to reach that ship as fast as possible, before anyone else could potentially find me. I could still last a while longer, and surely the pirates would have their own supplies.

So, I started searching for staircases, taking care not to touch any pipes I passed by just in case.

---

The castle wasn't that big. I wound up going past the water storage room anyway, because it just seemed like the best way to go: the hallway after the first staircase ran parallel to the castle's main entrance, and a long, darkened window to the left probably overlooked its central chamber. With the lights off in the main room, I couldn't see what was in there, but the corridor itself was lit enough for me to find my way.

I took a peek into the storage room as I passed by - none of the doors in this castle seemed to have actual doors, and were simply open apertures, save for the ones leading outside. It turned out to be a perfectly innocuous storeroom, with several huge metal tanks in the back and a bunch of wooden crates up front that I quickly deduced held food.

Should I steal some? Canon had basically offered to give it to me anyway, even if I was now avoiding the pipes to dodge the possibility of further manipulation now that I had a plan. I figured it would be okay to just grab a bit, so long as I didn't dawdle.

No alarms sounded. Cheeks bulging, I went on my way.

Behind the central room, another flight of stairs went up, and another went down after it in what was likely a mirrored configuration on the other side of the castle. A third staircase offered another way, and soon I was on a level where the metal plating was slightly less obtrusive, with fluffy red carpets that were both horribly unfitting and not that expensive in the first place. It was like someone without the resources of a royal was pretending to be one anyway.

And there were still pipes everywhere, crawling along the ceiling and walls.

Hallie. Faye stopped me abruptly. I think we're getting close to where the ponies are, and they're coming this way. Take cover if you don't want to be seen first.

I ducked into the closest door available, dropping into a shadow created by its frame and watching as stealthily as I could.

Their voices reached me before their visages. "No," a chiseled, callous stallion's voice was saying. "I expected as much. You don't get a reputation for not existing by showing your face around visitors to your castle. That said, I hoped our cargo could at least tempt him to barter..."

"This castle doesn't look like it gets many visitors," said a second voice, one which instantly made my blood run cold. "And we had to let a consul aboard our ship to even get here! With a vetting process like that, you'd think we could at least see the ringleader."

It was Rondo.

The Aldebaran incident had sunk to a deep page in my memory, something I tried not to dwell on now that I had smoothed things over with Leitmotif and gotten bigger problems to worry about. But I had completely forgotten that she didn't speak for the rest of her crew, and they parted ways after their capture by Elise. What even were the others? Vivace and... Tempo? Or was it Rubato?

But Rondo's voice brought his name instantly back to my head. If he was affiliated with the pirates - which was much more likely than an affiliation with the castle - that could complicate my new plans.

"Don't be so sure we haven't," the first voice corrected, its tone a strange and unsettling mix of pragmatism, mentorship and arrogance. "Sometimes the thing you know they're hiding is a trick to keep you from looking for what they're actually hiding. With creatures like these, you can never be too certain..."

"Quite bold of you to discuss this in the presence of a consul," said a third voice, snide and sure of itself yet maintaining a veneer of respectability.

"Is it?" asked the first voice. "I've got nothing to hide."

The group rounded the corner and entered the room, a long, wide hallway with stone pillars along the edges. My eyes picked out Rondo first; he hadn't changed his appearance at all since coming to Icereach. Walking in the middle was a huge stallion with pegasus wings and a chocolate coat, he wore a custom-made set of black and purple armor that accentuated his toned form and left his special talent open for all to see: an empty circle, just like Lilith, Samael and Estael's.

The third pony, a unicorn stallion of normal stature with a well-oiled mane, also wore custom armor, though it was clearly a mark of office more than something meant to be functional. Burnished, interlocking and proud, it had a green and purple insignia I recognized from Icereach's limited history textbooks as belonging to the Griffon Empire's House Everlaste - a symbol that was oddly missing from any of the castle's decorations, when Canon had called it Everlaste Palace.

His armor also had a perfectly folded cravat.

But the thing my eyes settled on and refused to leave was what Rondo was pulling: a wheeled cart carrying a block of ice. In the middle was Coda, exactly as I had seen her last.

My heart clenched. There she was...!

It looks like the pirates have her, Faye said in the back of my mind. Maybe trying to align ourselves with them doesn't have to mean sacrificing this goal, after all. Unnrus-kaeljos did say she might not stay in this area for long.

Yeah. But if they had her, they obviously had designs on her, too...

"Alright," said the biggest stallion, who had 'pirate king' written all over him. "I think it's time we left this dump and tried our luck with the Night's Boon. Us visiting your sworn enemies next wouldn't make you go back on your word, Consul."

"Of course not," huffed the stallion in a cravat. "I will escort your ship far enough that it can fly on its own without my power. What you do after that is your own business. But do remember the terms under which my lord offered to reconsider your proposal."

Rhodallis scoffed. "If he gets a second chance to buy the kid, it'll be because he sucks it up and decides he likes what I'm doing, not because I dance to anyone's tune. I know what you're playing at. I've seen this game before. You think you're so clever... but in reality, you're just lucky I have bigger targets to chase. Now get a move on back to the ship! This castle's decor is an eyesore."

I think that's our cue, Faye whispered. If you want a ride out of here with them, and with Coda, it's now or never.

I swallowed, then rose out of the shadows, having a sinking feeling this would end with signing another contract.

Comments

[Mini-Joe]

Yay more halcyon!

[RoboRed]

But the thing my eyes settled on and refused to leave was what Rondo was pulling: a wheeled cart carrying a block of ice. In the middle was Coda, exactly as I had seen her last.

Dagnabbit...that complicates things.

[BurningSkies]

"The name's Canon!" the bridge chirped, speaking with a big-city stallion's voice. "I'm a life support system! My purpose in existence is keeping your meaty moist bits from turning into desiccated rock. And you, chump, I'm thinking you're getting pretty desiccated. Been out here too long, or something? How'd you get out here in the first place?"

Canon as in Pachebel's Canon or as in headcanon?

If it's the music one, that makes at least four emotion-based lifeforms named after music: Coda, Cadence, the Composer, and now Canon. Probably has something to do with Harmony having the double meaning of "multiple notes combined to sound nice" and peace as in the Elements of Harmony. Wait would Discord count given that his name can also mean "multiple notes combined to sound not nice"?
We're a bit north for Canon being a disembodied alicorn to be likely, so maybe they're a windigo like the Composer?
Could also be a sphinx who figured out some fancy magic, given that this is the Griffon Empire.

If it's canon as in "the body of works taking place in a fictional world that is widely considered to the official/authoritative" then it literally just describes themselves, rather than a word which could have varying degrees of relevancy to who they actually are. As well, I wonder what they would think about literary powers such as breaking the fourth wall.

But I know what a windigo feels like, and I think there are traces of those here.

I didn't like any of this. Now that the conversation had turned to windigoes, Canon's demeanor reminded me worryingly of Ludwig.

I concur.

"This sure seems like something the castle security would be interested in," I noted as I climbed it, my boots feeling slick against the pipe's polished surface. Its metal felt thin somehow, not quite weak enough to buckle under my weight, but like I could punch it and leave a dent without too much trouble. "Why's there even a pipe here, anyway?"

Castle security could easily turn a bottleneck like this into a killzone where invaders trot up and get slaughtered one by one.

The Aldebaran incident had sunk to a deep page in my memory, something I tried not to dwell on now that I had smoothed things over with Leitmotif and gotten bigger problems to worry about. But I had completely forgotten that she didn't speak for the rest of her crew, and they parted ways after their capture by Elise. What even were the others? Vivace and... Tempo? Or was it Rubato?

Just how many words and chapters ago was Aldebaran?
On another note, (pun very much intended) the Composer composed the Aldebaran crew; he put them together. I have a feeling that Vivace and Tempo/Rubato aren't necessarily their real names, for whatever reason, either.

[Venlinelle]

...Wow, reading this as it comes out makes it astonishingly hard to remember what's going on.
I remember that the pirate king has been dealing with the changeling/Yakyakistani airships to make Ironridge look bad, and also harassing their trade routes and lowering morale, but not much beyond that. That's better than my memories of Coda absorbing the windigoes, though, which I forgot even happened and still can't recall when prompted. There was a book... and a room full of robots... and some teleporting... I'll reread it tomorrow.

Beyond that, I am both intrigued and delighted by the castle on the floating islands at the edge of the world that the sapient security system apparently thinks is the Griffonian Empire. That's extremely whimsical and I had a lot of fun with the descriptions.

[sploopy slooder]

ignoring that she is pretty much useless in combat, does halcyon even have a way to help coda? did Unnrus give her something to fix whatever happened to her?